@Autumn:
I assume so, but All of these cards are the official stats (none of them have been changed by players, all done by Wizards)?
100% official and sanctioned by WotC.
What are the most effective units?
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you forgot snipers, i know the chances of them getting a kil from a distance isnt easy, but there great for keeping the other guys infrantry out of the way. everything else goes alnog with me, even the flame thrower bit.
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Haven’t used the sniper yet.
The Wermacht Expert is 11 points… and rolls 6 dice at all ranges, +1 on each die. And has head shot special ability. Woo hoo.
Of course, this all seems to depend on how many points each person uses and what kind of map you are using. One sniper placed in the right spot in a 100 point game against an army that has just one or two infantry wouldn’t have much of an impact.
Against an opponent who is infantry heavy would make more of a difference.
There is another thread on this board about different set ups. I have used mostly 100 point armies and 150 sometimes. Once I used 200 points, but that was to allow more tanks on the map, not a ton of 4 point units.
The map is only so big-- and the game was designed for 100 point armies-- to optimize the use of tactics like cover and flanking. A bigger map with more objectives would possibly make infantry less useful because they can’t cover as much ground. Unless you extend the time of the game. And the possibilities go on and on.
So, some units may be more useful in bigger armies than they would be in smaller armies. I guess that’s why the German tanks didn’t show up in the winning 100 point tournament armies. They take up so much “space,” while you can fit in three Shermans and have room for a lot of other stuff.
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I managed to play a 300 point game the other day. Before I go into the team details, lemme just say that we didn’t give two sh*ts about historical accuracy. So yes, Germans and Japs were fighting together, as well as Brits and Americans alongside Russians. So here’s the teams. (as best as I can recall)
Axis :mrgreen:
2 King Tigers - 142
1 Nashorn - 45
1 SdKfz 251 - 14
2 SS Hauptsturmfuhrers - 14
2 SNLF Captains - 12 (I used these as paratroopers by the way)
4 MG42 Machine-Gun Teams - 40
3 Imperial Snipers - 24
1 SS Panzergrenadier - 5
1 Blackshirt - 4
Total = 300Allies :mrgreen:
1 IS-2 - 68
2 Guards T34/85s - 66
2 M3 Stuarts - 30
1 Red Devil Captain - 7
2 Screaming Eagle Captains - 22
4 Screaming Eagle Paratroopers - 36
4 Vickers Machine-Gun Teams - 32
3 Fanatical Snipers - 24
3 Polish Cavalry - 12
Total = 297In short, I (Axis) won the game. However, the ending was very anti-climactic. I don’t blame this on the 300 points, but just the units that we had toward the end. Both of our units held the objective, but my remaining units (both King Tigers) and his units (3 Paratroopers and a Paratrooper Captain) couldn’t kill each other. So when I say I won, I just mean that we reached round 10, and I had killed more of his stuff than he had of mine. (The King Tiger is awesome!)
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I’m thinking about experimenting with an all-soldiers army… maybe even all of one type of soldier. Might make for an interesting game.
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In considering of tournament play or playing for points.
In Set I, a big problem with an all soldier army is the inability to deal with the big tanks. Rolling 11 or 10 dice on 6 or 7 armor is tough to damage or destroy in one hit. And since the Tiger I has overrun that makes it less likely for that.
The all armor or mostly armor strategy against all infantry is to wander around, kill a few infantry, on turn seven (if you get to turn seven after 60 minutes), you storm the objective. The likely outcome is that the tanks get disrupted or damaged but not destroyed and time expires and the armor team wins.
For friendly games or games that include Set II, it can be fun and this may not apply as much.
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You see, i dont know if that is the rules are broken, but it is somewhat refreshing to know that even with 2 king Tigers on the board, you still had infantry running around…even if the two were completely ineffective against each other.
One of my major concerns with this game was that it was going to go the route of most WotC games were the rares are king and commons and uncommons were basicly cannon fodder. I learned playing L5R how important it was to have a balance and while rares gave the advantage in specific situations, it was the commons and uncommons that won the day. It actually makes me more enthusiastic about playing knowing that every unit is important.
By the way, I have a limited amount of pieces right now but it appears that the king tiger is by far the most expensive piece to field. Is that the case and is it really worth it’s cost?
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In a 100-point game, I’m not sure if it would be worth it. I played a 300-point game recently, and I used two. They have the best defense I’ve ever seen (frontal defense anyway) and monstrous attack values against vehicles. Just know that it can destroy any other tank going one-on-one.
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i played a big game the other day, it came down to me and my KV-1 agasint 2 king tigers. i won with out a scrath on my tank. (allthough he rolled the worst rolls ever recoded in the histrory of rolls, 3 times, i sh*t you not, 3 times he rolled all 1’s and then another time all 3’s.) the king tiger is amazing i will give it that, put aside the fac that my buddy had horrible rolls, the KV-1 would have gotten the crap kicked out of it.
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I am settling on 150 games as a good fit. Maybe 200 to allow an extra tank for a bigger battle.
I do not believe your friend rolled all 1’s out of how many dice??
Funny you mention that. I recently played the 1943 Battle of Kursk (with a couple 1944 tanks, sorry) and my German-using opponent consistently rolled terribly with his big tanks. He was consistenly getting 3 or 4 successes out of 15 rolls! My Ruskies were surviving his salvos. I somehow managed to lose this game through terrible tactics of my own, which I will not burden you with details.
Let’s say I have a habit of leaving all of my units out of LOS except for one… and this one happened to be my KV-1! What a waste of the “Hulking Mass” special ability.
I am looking forward to playing year restricted scenarios. For instance, Barbarossa. 1941. At that point, the Panther and Tiger weren’t on the battlefield. Not even the Mark IV Panzer, according to this game. The best tank in the world at that time was the T-34. So, in such a scenario, the Russians would have an advantage over the Wermacht.
Of course, 1941 was a unmitigated disaster for the Soviet Union, as it lost every major engagement before winter, invaluable equipment, hundreds of miles of its territory, and hundreds of thousands of men to German encirclements by armored thrusts, men who would starve in German captivity. The cause of these calamities was abject neglect and delusion by Stalin, who didn’t believe Germany would attack, and for other reasons to lengthy to mention in this post.
But this can’t be incorporated into a 100-point 1941 battle in Axis and Allies minis. It seems the Russians might even have an advantage because the T-34 is the best of all pre-1942 tanks in both sets.
Any thoughts?
How about Battle of France in 1940? Have enough Renault Tanks? or even Italian soldiers? Or some 1935 engagement between Japan and Chinese. The way I am going with my boosters, I will soon have enough Kuomintang rifleman to field a 15-unit, 30 point army!!
This game has some great possibilities… if you are willing to drop major coin to get enough units.
Have any of you played any of the scenarios published on the Avalon Hill site???
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Apparently the Panzer Mark IV was used before 1942, but those models did not have a 75 mm gun as the 1942 Miniature accurately wields.
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From another WWII website–
Maybe the designers can make an early model Mark IV Panzer in Set III? For use in Barbarossa. :-)
3. German PzKfW Mk. IV Panzer
The 17.3 ton Mk. IV Panzer tank was introduced in 1937 and used throughout WW II. Early in that conflict it was the dominant tank. Its fast firing, short barreled 75mm gun was ideal for supporting infantry and the Mark IV was used with great effectiveness in German Blitzkrieg attacks on Poland, France, the low countries, and initially in the invasion of the USSR. Top speed was 18 MPH.
There were hull and turret mounted machine guns to increase the Mark IV’s lethality against enemy infantry. Between 1940 and 1945, Germany produced about 9,000 of these tanks, making the Mk. IV far more numerous on both the Western and Eastern Fronts than the later Panther and Tiger tanks. The Mark IV provided a nice balance of protection, firepower, reliability and maneuverability early in the war.
When it was realized that the original, short barreled 75mm gun lacked the muzzle velocity to penetrate the heavy armor of the newer Soviet T34 tank, a long barreled 75mm gun became standard in the Mark IV. This high velocity weapon served for the rest of the war, keeping the Mk. IV a dangerous foe for all Allied tanks, although by then its 30mm armor could be defeated by the front line Allied tanks.
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So to follow up on my recent posts…
After checking out all the units, if one were to play a 1941 scenario Germans versus Russians-- the opening battles of Barbarossa-- the Best tank the Germans could take into the battle would be the Mark III Panzer. This is gap the designers hopefully will fill.
They should create a Panzer Mark IV model before the Ausf. G which is currently the only Mark IV in either set. Earlier Mark IV’s were commonplace in 1941.
Before Germans saw the T-34, their tanks were used mostly for infantry support-- to blast bunkers and fortifications.
In '42, the Mark IV Ausf. G provided an answer to the T-34, but not until 1943 did the Panther arrive, which has superior fire power to the T-34.
I’d rather have more tanks to choose from than Chinese or Polish units!!! :-)
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True…the polish units are so so, but those chinese really bite! I would love to see a bit more french units.
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The Tiger was used in late 1942, premiering at the battle of Leningrad.
The Panther was used in 1943 for the first time. -
One more….
The SS-Panther card says “1942” but from everything I have read the Panther did appear on the battlefield until '43.
Again, the Tiger debuted in late 1942 at Leningrad, after the Battle of Stalingrad.
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Last Sunday, I played a 100 points game. I was playing USA and my opponent was playing Germany. I was hoping to try my paratroopers since I had just get those and my opponent had the same kind of idea, he used his King Tiger. At start, I was pretty afraid of that huge thing, but it handed out that, against infantry, my paratroopers, the King Tiger isn’t worth the 72 points.
My point is, if I would have to field a huge tank I would go with the Tiger and even than I prefer using more less powerful tank. One big tank is fun, but many give you enough maneuvrability to beat and adapt to different situation. So even if I personnaly have a King Tiger, I don’t think I’ll ever put it into play in a 100 points game (ok, well, I’m going to do it anyways because the unit is cool :roll: , but I wouldn’t in a tournament.
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Okay… finally, I found the answer. The Panther was introduced in late 1942 as was the Tiger, so for all of 1941 and the first half of 1942, the Germans best answer to the KV-1 and T-34 was the Mark IV.
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Amazing how much research I had to do to find out such a simple answer. :-(
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This is great information!
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